Then came the turning point in the West. As Hans Dieter Baroth wrote in his 1989 book Boys, Heaven Belongs to You - The History of the Oberliga West 1947 to 1963, on Monday there were no more newspapers because the Rhein-Ruhr-Zeitung had already reported on May 20, 1947: Schalke no longer champions of Westphalia. The great surprise in West German football was Schalke 04's 3:2 defeat in Herne before 30,000 spectators in the final for the Westphalian championship.\n\nSchalke were so deeply shocked that they skipped the trophy presentation.
In the years that followed, Borussia consolidated their newly won position at the top. Between 1947 and 1950 they won the West German championship four times in a row.\n\nTheir first attempt to grab the German title failed in the 1949 final against VfR Mannheim, but Borussia Dortmund were clearly on their way to becoming one of the country's leading teams. Before the Bundesliga was introduced in 1963 they would become West German champions three times, reach two further finals, and above all win the German title in 1956 and 1957 with exactly the same starting eleven - a first in German football.
At the start of the 1960s Borussia had a hungry, well-drilled side featuring players such as Hans Tilkowski, Helmut Bracht, Reinhold Wosab, Wolfgang Paul, Alfred Schmidt, Dieter Kurrat, Timo Konietzka and Gerd Cyliax, and they continued on their successful path after the Bundesliga was founded. Dortmund won the DFB Cup in 1965 and a year later beat highly favored Liverpool 2:1 after extra time in Glasgow to become the first German club to win a European trophy. Yet the first Bundesliga championship was still thrown away on the home straight because of the celebrations after Glasgow, and the club finished second behind 1860 Munich.
That was a key moment.
